Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN)  -- Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle just might be the Tea Party's biggest gamble yet. A staunch conservative with a history of making bold and sometimes controversial comments, Angle insists her comments have been taken out of context in her campaign to oust Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in upcoming midterm congressional elections. "I'll be a mainstream senator," said Angle. A grandmother of 10 children who secured the backing of Tea Party leaders on her way to winning the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, Angle has been both praised and criticized for her views.

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Harry Reid is the most negatively viewed person in this state and there is a hardened opposition to him.


Washington (CNN) -- CNN's John King and other top political reporters empty out their notebooks each Sunday on "Inside Politics" to reveal five things that will be in the headlines in the days, weeks and months ahead. Some late chess moves in House races, a rush to lawyer up, and some early vote tallies that suggest Democratic struggles -- those were part of our trip around the "Inside Politics" table to close our Sunday conversation. 1. The candidates give way to the voters -- and then the lawyers Eight or nine Senate races are dead heats entering the final week, so can you predict with any certainty who will win?


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Walker of Wisconsin is a conservative favorite and could be a formidable GOP presidential contender.


Washington (CNN) -- West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, the self-educated son of a coal miner who became the longest-serving member of Congress, died early Monday at age 92, the senator's office said. Byrd, a nine-term Democrat, was known as a master of the chamber's often-arcane rules and as the self-proclaimed "champion of the Constitution," a jealous guardian of congressional power. His speeches were laced with references to poetry and the Greek and Roman classics, often punctuated by the brandishing of his pocket copy of the national charter. He was also known as the "King of Pork," using top positions on the Senate Appropriations Committee to steer federal spending to his home state -- one of the nation's poorest.

He was one of 23 senators to oppose the authorization, warning that
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Congress was abdicating its constitutional power to declare war by giving the president what amounted to a blank check.